


the stone in the river

by actonbell



Series: we can be heroes [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Dom Sebastian, Dom/sub, Facial Shaving, Gentle Dom, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Slow Burn, Sub Chris, Switching, Top Sebastian, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:39:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He should have known no good could possibly have come of Hayley giving him the Winter Soldier boxers.</p><p>Takes place approximately during the Civil War reshoots.</p><p>Written as a Yuletide 2015 Treat for <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/ranalore/profile">ranalore.</a></p><p>This now has a sequel, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5658661">"by the dawn's early light."</a> There will probably be several more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stone in the river

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rana Eros (ranalore)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ranalore/gifts).



 

1.

 

Chris isn't a hypocrite; when he says stuff like _#blessed_ and _#grateful_ on Twitter he really means it, like he means it when he thanks veterans or wishes his mom a happy Mother's Day. He knows he really is blessed, and he is grateful. He is.

When he goes back home, sometimes he sees a friend's brother or one of his cousins who isn't doing so well: a layoff, an unexpected medical crisis after the yearly deductible reset, an underwater home that was someone's lifetime achievement and now feels like a millstone around their necks, dragging them to drown. He helps out, when he can, the same way he did the silly videos with Hayley and Pratt for charity, because he knows how lucky he is, and how it took just a moment of being unlucky for people he knows to have radically different lives for really no reason at all. He bought his home base by the Combat Zone, he bought his mom their old house in Sudbury, he helps Scott when he needs it (and when Scott will accept it); he has regular work, work he enjoys and that he's good at, and sometimes he even gets to do a movie he really likes. He knows how rare that is in Hollywood, now, he knows that for all the annoying shit about being a cog in Marvel's giant scheme to dominate the world through superhero movies, he made the right choice and if he had it all to do over again, he'd choose what he has. Every time.

He has to remind himself of this every day -- sometimes it feels like every fucking _hour_ \-- during reshoots, because reshoots are a giant fucking pain in the ass.

The movies are tough enough: months of daily workouts lasting for hours, runs in the morning, runs in the evening, exercise schedules, eating little pure protein meals (tuna, liver, turkey, more tuna) every couple of hours, cramming it in like stuffing a Christmas goose. But that's just physical: it's grueling, often boring, but he can deal with it, he knows how to do it. He can treat fight scenes like learning a tap routine, any other dance, enjoy the gymnastics and boxing and everything else that lets him get out of his head. Losing himself in a character is easy, always has been.

The downtime is what really gets to him, waiting in a trailer like a dog on a leash for the endless setups, going out and doing fifteen minutes of work with that glaring green colour all around, talking to nothing, pretending to hit something, then waiting for another couple of hours. He was an old hand at shooting stuff out of sequence, but he still remembers the first time he realized he was basically just another effect in a big action scene, something to be arranged and manipulated and finished later. _That_ stung. He tries to use it as motivation, remember when he and Scott used to follow Carly around playing pretend and they'd all act out a dozen different roles in one day, knights, soldiers, cowboys, astronauts, magicians....If he hadn't had Scarlett as his rock almost from the beginning, coolly bringing it in every take, a total professional, and then a total cut-up behind the scenes too, and Robert calling him, texting him, talking him down day after day, he might have just truly lost it. Right at the start.

Even before them, on the first Cap movie, when he hadn't known what the hell _he_ was going to look like, what was going to be left of his performance, Sebastian had been there, poking fun, endlessly teasing him in that dry deadpan until the two of them had to bite the insides of their cheeks into raw hamburger to keep from corpsing when the cameras rolled. He knows how really lucky he is, lucky not just to have this kind of success in his chosen field, but to have the coworkers he does, people who've been with him since over four years ago in freaking _Albuquerque_ and who'll be there with him three, four years from now, and maybe even after that.

But Chris senses he and Scarlett and Robert are maybe being eased out, making way for "Avengers: The Next Generation" as Robert calls them, newer faces who won't have a wealthy powerful older movie star looking out for them all. (Scarlett sometimes calls Robert their sugar daddy -- once to his face. Of course, he just laughed.)

Chris knows, they all know, Robert does it not just because he's a generous guy, but he got the second chance of a lifetime; so he passes it on, however he can, that luck in the form of money or influence or advice. Robert's the one who arranges get-togethers and dinners and actually set them up one night with brandy and cigars and told them stories of Darkest Hollywood, as he called it. What it was like to be a Brat Packer and then work with Fincher, Clooney, Attenborough, to see the BBC Sherlock Holmes show swallow the movie series he'd help jump-start, to have it all and lose it all and realize both having and losing were illusions. That you built up your life, like a stone in a river that got a piece of wood jammed up against it, which then collected dead leaves, branches, mud, weeds, more mud, until eventually birds had enough room to make a nest and then were feeding their young, not knowing they were living on the water, balanced on nothing.

When the river rises, Robert told them, the earth washes away, the birds fly off, the branches and wood dislodge, the mud dissolves, and the little island's gone, leaving nothing but the stone, under the water. After he'd finished the story, he'd looked around at their absorbed faces and clapped his hands down on his thighs, visibly moving on.

Chris knows it's silly, but he'd stubbed his cigar out half-smoked and then slipped it into his pocket, then wrapped it up in plastic so it wouldn't stink and buried it deep in a drawer in his childhood bedroom in his mother's house, hanging onto it as a little talisman as proof it had really happened, that that night had been as good as he remembered. Which kind of went against the whole fucking point of the story, but since he doesn't really hang onto much, he figures if out of all the ten thousand things he latches on to one cigar stub like a weird spiritual binky, it's okay.

The point of the story isn't that you shouldn't build up all that crap that people think goes to make up a real life, anyway, houses and jobs and mortgages and debts and nests and mud and weeds. Just that you should know it all gets washed away. The point of the story is the river, and the stone.

Robert isn't here right now, in this hotel with them, which is a big part of why it sucks because Chris is lost in his own head, having just slumped on the still-made bed without even turning on the light. Robert didn't have that many reshoot scenes to begin with, and while Chris enjoys the infamous improvising that led to fun stuff like that shawarma bit, there hadn't been that much of it. He gets the impression Robert had flown out mainly to make sure the grinding Ultron reshoots weren't going to happen again.

Chris would dismiss this as his own paranoia except he floated the idea to Scarlett the day Robert left and, to his surprise, she agreed with it. She's much more canny and clear-eyed about the business than he is, so usually her judgements don't support his, and it's a little disorienting to think he isn't just spinning himself up. 

(But he can't call Robert, not right now, not about this. He doesn't even know what he'd be calling about, really. He can't wrap his own head around what went wrong.)

The brothers are as open as they ever were to suggestions, and God knows Chris is dying to make them, as usual. Because as usual he can't sit in his trailer or even on set and keep his mouth shut, he wants to take control, rewrite the script, reblock the action, hell, he'd probably make the DP want to kill him if he knew anything about lenses or filters or framing. He knows it's part of that need to keep his sticky little fingers on the controls, as one book he'd read put it, the urge that drives him way too deep into his own head, replaying scenes and how they should have gone, arguing (sometimes even out loud, which is embarrassing) with the director, the writers, the producers, frustration eating him from the inside out. And he doesn't want to think about _that_ right now, because of course he can't ever just keep any damn thing to himself, he had to go blurt it out in front of Sebastian.

He should have known no good could possibly have come of Hayley giving him the Winter Soldier boxers.

 

2.

 

_(one hour earlier)_

 

Chris's cell phone blares "The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan" at him for the third time in five minutes and he groans. All he wanted, after four hours of reshoots which will probably wind up as twenty seconds of finished film, was to pick up his special foil-wrapped training dinner (chicken breast, half a sweet potato, a cup of broccoli), stand in the shower for forty-five minutes, drag himself out for his evening run, eat whatever the post-workout meal is -- he can't even remember right now -- and crawl into bed.

But there is no hiding from Hayley, who showed up on a surprise set visit yesterday, Mackie promptly declaring her his early and best birthday present. Not only had she or Scarlett or Mackie -- or all three of them, in an unholy pranking trinity -- somehow reprogrammed _every_ ringtone on his phone to the Steve Rogers theme song, he can't figure how they did it, much less how to undo it. Captain America would probably be better at the electronic gadgets from the future than he is. Scarlett will never let him forget he'd actually confessed to still missing his BlackBerry Bold.

Messages begin to pop up:

_are you still sulking_

_why is your beard so sad_

_do you miss your sugar daddy that much_

_you two could always Skype_

He rolls over on the bed and resists the urge to hurl the phone at the wall. The chicken suddenly smells terrible -- how much chicken has he eaten this week? _Today?_ \-- and so does the broccoli. He fantasizes about just throwing the carefully weighed and measured food away and getting a burger instead. A giant plate of pasta. Two plates. Shit, he can't miss his run. But he can't move.

 _ok. just tired,_ he manages. Hayley is the embodiment of a terrier. Once she gets her teeth into something, you'd have to cut off her air to let her go. It is her most admirable and terrifying quality. There's something weirdly charming about it, at least until it's directed at you.

The beard is a sore fucking point, so of course Hayley's pressing on it. It hasn't been that long since principal photography ended, and he didn't have a chance to grow it out into its "full hirsute glory," as Robert put it (and he could talk, at least he got to keep his fucking goatee) but he's been enjoying not having to shave, feeling the stubble soften. Usually he really dislikes the look that's made him famous -- other people apparently see only Steve Rogers (and are only too happy to list all the many, varied ways they'd like to "bang Steve like a screen door in a hurricane") but he always sees the hairline sneaking back like an army retreating at night, the soft blobby chin, the way his cheeks hang like a basset hound's. (Scarlett has assured him multiple times that he's crazy, and he knows all the screen-door-banging people would too, but he still sees it, every time. That's another reason he likes giving up shaving -- no more fucking mirrors.)

He hates how _young_ he looks barefaced, and how at the same time every forehead furrow, every skin imperfection, every sag and future wrinkle, is revealed, spotlit. ("You sound like Dorian Gray," Scarlett told him once in exasperation.) He thinks the buzzcut and the thick beard and facial hair make him look older, tougher, more wised-up, more.... _male._ Less like a fumbling kid, someone whose non-Marvel career shorted out, a guy who has no idea what the fuck he's doing, who can't make the right choices. He likes being that, yes, _ruggedly handsome_ guy with a little bit of swagger, someone who doesn't need to hide behind the glaring Captain America mask of pancaked bare skin or a hairpiece.

His phone is suspiciously silent. He sighs. He rolls over again. He's homesick and he knows it. He hates being so obvious about it, but it's one of the few things his friends don't ride him mercilessly about. They razz him endlessly about damnear everything else, partly to distract him from his own misery, and it would be embarrassing if it didn't work so well. Even then, in moments like this when he's alone or down, he misses _home_ so much it actually hurts. That's the real reason he moved out of L.A., bought that apartment he so rarely sees, goes back every holiday season and for birthdays too. Even in Boston, a lot of the time he still doesn't feel grounded, like the times when he was a kid and couldn't sit still at mealtimes, and his mom let him stand there with his legs jittering and trembling, hanging on to the edge of the table so he wouldn't fly to pieces. And home is still one of the few places where he can be a regular guy in a regular club, go home with one of the girls he's known since high school with no expectations and _no fucking paparazzi,_ no international press scrutinizing every twitch of an eyelash.

Although, to be honest, that hasn't really been true since the _Avengers,_ and it's been even less so with every movie since then. It's like they're in the _Wizard of Oz,_ riding along in the farmhouse caught in the tornado, looking down at the ground sinking further and further away. No point in the inner stillness, unless it's the eye of the storm. He thinks about the fantasy he had as a kid, going off to live in the woods, seeing nobody, needing nothing he didn't provide for himself. Entirely self-sufficient, no eternally watching eyes. Like being on the surface of the moon, except all green and living.

His phone rings again. He groans, really loudly. "DAMMIT, Hayley -- "

But it's not Hayley, it's Scarlett.

_check Twitter_

.....oh, _shit._

It's a big joke how Hayley's conquering the world through social media, except it really isn't. She turned that stupid dubsmash fad into a force for charity, she made sure Marvel knew how eager her followers were to see behind-the-scenes pictures and video, and she did it all while somehow staying completely herself. If anyone could be the first female Doctor Who, it'll be Hayley. Either that, or she'll just get elected Queen somehow and guide her empire into Britain's Golden Age. Chris has a Twitter, which he uses awkwardly and rarely, because there are thousands and thousands of people who favourite every single Twitter post he makes. It's amazing, but overwhelming. He can't handle that much undiluted fascination. He knows it's not really for _him_ \-- he knows Norma Jeane and Marilyn weren't the same person -- but that doesn't help. Robert and Sebastian both seem to enjoy trolling the hell out of everyone on Facebook and Instagram, respectively, just like they do offline. Scarlett, who has the most sense of any of them, probably, refuses to give up one scrap of her private life and just watches them all flail around for her own dubious entertainment. If she's Bat-signaling him about it, it's probably even more epic than what Hayley usually does.

_@HayleyAtwell @ChrisEvans Are you wearing them??_

_@HayleyAtwell @ChrisEvans Are you wearing them now?_

_@HayleyAtwell @ChrisEvans How about....NOW??_

Chris, unlike Steve Rogers, knows when he's beaten. He groans, even more loudly, but gets up, slings his now-cold dinner in the minibar, stuffs the boxers she's talking about back in their gift wrapping, and in a surge of pointless rebellion, doesn't even put his shoes back on -- he's barefoot in ratty sweats and an even rattier T-shirt, what he threw on after hours in the stiff, sweaty costume -- and lets the door slam-click heavily behind him.

In the time it takes him to walk the approximately fifty feet to Hayley's room -- yes, they _are_ all on the same floor, whoever made that booking is going to be so fucking sorry later -- Twitter has, as they say, blown up, with people demanding to know exactly what he's supposed to be wearing, and why, and coming up with dozens of impossible creatively obscene suggestions. He bangs on the door loud as he can with one hand, trying not to drop his phone, keycard, and package -- these fucking pants are so old the pockets are more hole than pocket -- and yells, "Open up! In the name of -- truth, justice, and the American way!"

The door flies open so fast he startles backward. "Wrong superhero," Scarlett says, with that trademark smirk. "Sebastian's the one who's supposed not to know anything about comics, not you."

Sebastian, draped across the foot of the king-size bed like a sprawling cat, rolls over and protests, "I know about comics _now,_ I went out and _bought_ all the Winter Soldier books and I -- "

"But back in the old country," Mackie says from the head of the bed, where he's propped up with one arm around Hayley, who's madly stabbing away at her phone and cackling, "you were too cold and poor to buy comics, right? Unless you were gonna burn 'em. And what else -- oh yeah, bananas!" Mackie and Seb rip on each other endlessly, obviously enjoying it, like two guys playing pickup on a weekend afternoon, having fun but still keeping score. They have the same dry-as-dust sense of humour, although Mackie isn't as good at being deadpan. Chris likes how they riff off each other, and tries not to be jealous, and mainly he isn't -- not of the rapport, anyway, but because he knows that kind of ease and detachment comes from not thinking that the audience is constantly judging you and finding you wanting. They both have that confidence, and he wishes he did, but he probably never will, just because of his basic personality. Scarlett gets back on the bed, crawling with theatrical clumsiness over Mackie's and Hayley's legs, Mackie pulling her in and crushing her to his other side.

Sebastian groans theatrically, arching his back and throwing one forearm over his eyes. "Not again with the goddamn bananas."

 _"You_ brought them up, dude -- "

"Once! _One_ interview, I don't know how long ago -- "

"The internet never forgets, man. Your banana is hanging out there in it, for all time."

"Fascinated as we all are by your banana," Chris says, and has to smile at how Sebastian uncovers his face and looks at him upside-down like an owl or something, all messy hair and giant pale eyes, "I believe I was summoned here for a reason." Hayley looks up, acute as ever; he lightly tosses her the brightly wrapped package, tape already coming undone again, and she drops her phone in her lap and clutches the boxers to her chest. She makes a noise like a dolphin would if it could scream in joy and holds them up, letting them unroll like a flag. They aren't that bad, really: a subdued very dark grey, pinstriped with a lighter grey so the effect actually is a little metallic. But there's a giant red star printed on the fabric right in the obvious place, and Chris fights to keep his face stern as everyone else cracks up.

"So _that's_ what she wants you to wear! Are you gonna wear just those and nothing but, Chris? Maybe socks?"

"No, no, boxers and socks, that's a bad look -- he could wrap himself in the American flag!"

"Are there socks that have the flag _on_ them, on the socks?"

"....Sit down, willya? I'm getting a crick in my neck." Chris lets Sebastian reach up and catch his wrist with one hand, draw him closer, then pulls free to sit cross-legged on the edge of the bed, so he can see both Sebastian and Mackie and the girls. (Quickly checks his sweatpants for holes in the _crotch_ \-- none, thank God. Very debonair.) "Hayley, I am not letting you take a picture of me in _those_ so you can put it on Twitter."

"It's funny, his mouth moves but all I hear is wah-wah-wah," Hayley says, flourishing the boxers in time with her words.

"Why not have _Sebastian_ wear them and nothing but? Since he's _actually_ the fucking Winter Sol -- "

"Because Sebastian fell on his fucking Winter Soldier arm and didn't get it off right away, and bruises that look like the beginning of gangrene are not that sexy," Sebastian says. Sure enough, he's favouring his left arm -- not leaning on it, keeping it up off the bed, across his chest. Chris frowns.

"How the hell did that happen? Weren't they watching?"

"It wasn't a fight scene -- it was just some retakes, medium shots, and it was the rubber one. I forget I'm even fucking, you know, wearing it. I was going back to my trailer, I tripped on some cables, fell down. No big deal."

"Very smooth," Mackie says. "Rrrrrico -- Suave," and the girls laugh. "Yes, poor thing, we had him ice it....oh, I love that song!" Hayley says, and grabs her phone back up, probably to start looking for it. Mackie tries to snatch the boxers off her lap, but Scarlett's too fast for him. She holds them in front of her face, right below her eyes, fluttering lashes coquettishly as if it's a veil.

Chris is still frowning. "You should keep on icing that -- "

"I know, I know. I _have_ been, all right? Really. They made me." He points down to some blue gel bags on the floor, floppy-looking and beaded with condensation. "I'm just taking a break. Besides, you're the -- ice cube head, not me."

"Ice cube head, really? That the best you can do?" Chris laughs. He knows his friends are clowning at least partly to pull him out of his sulky funk, and while it's a little obvious, he does appreciate it.

"I'm distracted by the idea of you in my underwear." Sebastian hikes his eyebrows.

Chris laughs again. "Not your underwear, if you're not even wearing it!"

Sebastian makes an exaggerated _oh-yeah-really_ kind of face, and Chris notices in that offhand way that sometimes happens how good-looking Sebastian really is -- the reddened lips, the long wavy untidy hair, the way his nose and chin and cheekbones are so sculpted they're almost stark. It's like a weird switch in perspective, the same thing as when you look at that old picture of a goblet that's also two faces pressed together. It never lasts long, it's more of a flash, and then he's back to seeing Seb as just another guy, a coworker, someone who's got his back, a buddy. The same thing used to happen with Scarlett, when he first knew her.

He just wishes it wasn't happening right now, with all of them on this hotel bed, and him in his goddamn _sweatpants._ He squirms a little, relieved when Hayley dives down to the space beside the bed and comes up with a half-full bottle of what looks like Scotch. She finds a relatively clean glass behind the empty bottles, pours herself a hefty slug, and hands the bottle to Mackie. "Well, if Chris won't....and Sebastian can't....who else is left to help us in our hour of need?"

Scarlett takes advantage of Mackie letting go of her when Hayley gives him the Scotch and dives off the bed with the boxers, yelling, "I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!" She runs into the bathroom and slams the door. They all lose it again, and Chris, tired of holding himself up, flops down on the bed next to Sebastian, head to toe, so Sebastian says, "You're _barefoot?"_

Chris shrugs. "Why not? We're not going outside, and it's all carpeted." That was a mistake, because Hayley pounces down on the end of the bed so she can tickle his arches, which are still uncalloused and vulnerable. He reflexively yanks his knees up so hard he almost gets Sebastian's left arm, curling away and gasping, "You bastards, where's my backup? My wingman and my best friend! Aren't you supposed to have my six?" Hayley's really got him pinned, largely because he doesn't want to jar Sebastian and she's merciless.

"Invalided out, sorry, gotta get the arm back to the body shop," Sebastian says.

Mackie looks at him, then Hayley, then back, very dramatically. "You want me to take on Agent Carter in hand-to-hand combat? I don't _think_ so."

Thankfully, Scarlett comes back out of the bathroom in the Winter Soldier boxers and a cute crop top, to applause and whoops and wolf whistles, and Hayley lets go of him to grab her phone instead. Scarlett and Mackie start making suggestions about what should be in the photograph -- they finally settle on a close-up of the boxers with just a hint of skin on each side, "Keep 'em guessing, they love trying to figure shit like this out" -- and Chris just lies there next to Sebastian, still gasping a little. His stomach actually aches from laughing that hard, but it feels good. As Hayley is debating whether or not to show Scarlett's belly button -- "To B.B. or not to B.B." -- Sebastian says out of nowhere, "You have very long toes." He sounds pretty far gone; Chris wonders when he started drinking.

Chris wouldn't mind having a slug of something himself. "Oh, yeah? You know what they say about guys with very long toes...."

"What...do they say?" Sebastian sometimes has these little hesitations -- not stutters but very brief pauses -- when he talks, almost like a drawl. Sometimes it seems like he's too surprised at what just came out of his own mouth to keep right on going. Sometimes in interviews it makes people assume he's stoned (although Chris knows sometimes he does it to stall when he doesn't like questions). Chris thinks it's probably the last remnant of growing up speaking Romanian, then German, and _then_ English, some little spark deep in Seb's brain remembering it has to jump to C rather than B or A for the right word. Chris also thinks it's cute as all hell, for what reason he can't fathom, but it's like the way Scarlett's voice breaks up when she gets loud and doesn't control it, the way a little scar on someone's skin can be weirdly sexy, not because of what it is, but because it's something nobody else in the world has.

"That they have trouble finding shoes that fit." Chris sits up and starts looking for the bottle Hayley left beside the bed, on its side but thankfully with the cap on tight. He pours a couple of fingers for himself and gestures with the bottle to Seb, silently enquiring, but he shakes his head.

"Nah, they gave me a muscle relaxant, I shouldn't mix right now. Thanks."

Hayley whoops, "Eighty retweets in one minute!" and Chris shuts his eyes, shakes his head. "They love it! What'll we give them next? Shall we do a dubsmash?"

"We were fighting all day!" Chris whines. He mugs exaggeratedly to Sebastian: _say yes!_

"Oh, uh, yeah, sure," Sebastian obliges blandly.

"And sitting around in trailers. And falling down," Mackie adds helpfully. "Falling down takes a lot out of a guy."

"Yeah, you should know," Sebastian sneers back, and they make faces at each other.

"Hopeless, the pack of you. Absolutely hopeless."

"How about...." Scarlett begins to suggest, and something about the suppressed excitement bubbling up in her voice makes the hairs on the back of Chris's neck stand straight up and salute. "....the annual Shaving of the Beard?"

Chris nearly spits out the Scotch. "Oh, no. No no n -- "

Hayley gives her dark gleeful cackle. "Oh, _yes_ yes yes! -- Come on, Chris, didn't they tell you you had to do it today? That's why you've been so down in the dumps, yeah? Let's do it! Make something fun of it."

Chris's day had, in fact, been ruined by makeup telling him that the stubble -- not even the beginning of a beard yet really -- has to go, because while shooting some fight set-ups while he's wearing that damn helmet (because they had "to be more exciting," whatever that means) that are half his stunt double anyway is one thing, they've gotten notice there's going to be some dialogue and character shit tomorrow. Either he can shave himself or they'll do it when he's in the chair, and while they'd probably be okay with it, he wants to shave his own damn face. It's a dumb thing, he knows, a guy thing, a Chris thing. Except of course he doesn't _want_ to do it at all, so he's been putting it off and "down in the dumps" ever since. Hayley's right.

He's tired of his own sulkiness and always tries not to take himself too seriously, to pop his own bubble whenever possible, so he heaves a huge, exaggerated sigh and says mock-brattily, "Ohh- _kay."_ Scarlett and Hayley cheer while Seb and Mackie give him a slow clap that just gets slower and slower. "Thanks, guys, thanks so much, really."

"We need a Before picture!" Hayley cries, and starts swatting at him and Seb. "Move up, move up." They do, Seb still being careful of his arm but moving more easily now, and Mackie makes that beckoning _come here_ kung fu gesture from the _Matrix_. He and Seb get on either side of Chris, all of them up against the padded headboard, the two of them pointing at his face and making rude expressions. Seb's face is scrunched in one of those incredible contortions that makes him look like a Muppet. "Beautiful!" Hayley exclaims, and starts clicking away. Scarlett loops one arm around her waist and looks at the phone screen with her, their heads pressed together. "Turn a little bit -- there, that's great," she says, then whispers something in Hayley's ear that makes her laugh so hard she nearly drops the phone.

"That one?" she asks Scarlett, swiping through. "Or -- "

"No, this one, definitely."

"What'll we call it? 'Samson Unshorn'? Like 'unbound,' or is that too clever-clever?"

Chris clears his throat loudly and says, "Um, excuse me ladies, but do _we_ get to see -- "

"No! No!" "Certainly not," they say over each other.

"Pull up her Instagram on your phone," Seb says to Chris.

The photo seems to magnetically gather likes and replies and reposts and links before it's even uploaded, in the internet's terrifying way, and Chris has to admit the girls picked one that captures each of the guys pretty well: Mackie looks coolly handsome, Chris is leaning forward laughing with his eyes tight shut, and Seb looks demented and weirdly hot at the same time. Hayley's captioned it "The Americas," which gives him a ridiculously warm glow right in the center of his chest. She sees his smile and grins back, but then her grin gets too big and sharp and she goggles her eyes in a way both comic and terrifying. "Right! Off to the demon barber with you, double time. Quick march."

 _"Move it,_ Evans," Sebastian says, surprisingly loud, and pokes Chris in the side, right on his sensitive spot. Chris yelps and jerks up straight, and Seb pretends to manhandle him off the bed, maybe a little harder than necessary. "On your feet, soldier! On your feet!" Seb barks, and hoists Chris up under his arms, because Chris is laughing so hard he keeps sagging backward. "Hey," he gets out, "I understood that ref -- " Seb squeezes him a little, arms wrapped around his ribs, not tight enough to hurt but cutting off his joke, and walks him to the bathroom. Of course, now that they're out of the way, Mackie holds out his arms to the girls and they settle back on either side of him, all three just out of the frame of the bathroom doorway.

"Hey," Chris asks Seb, "how come we're stuck together in a bathroom, and Mackie's on the bed with a beautiful woman on each arm?"

Seb pretends to consider the question seriously. "Well, he's Mackie."

"This is true. That's very true. That explains so many things." Chris hadn't thought he was that drunk but for some reason he's buzzed, skin feeling hot where Sebastian's pressed up against him, chest to back, his hands on Chris's shoulders now, guiding him in. Seb turns him around and gently pushes down until Chris is sitting on the toilet lid, his bare feet too cold on the bathroom tile, slightly dazed. Seb puts two fingers under Chris's chin and lifts it just a little, says "Mmm" in a sort of clinical tone and reaches over to turn on the hot water full blast. He gets a towel from the rack and actually fucking drapes it over one arm, like an old-fashioned butler in a black-and-white movie -- _Jarvis,_ Chris dimly thinks, and _Jeeves_ \-- and calls, not loud but over the running water, "Hey, Mackie?" When he goes to the door and then catches a small dark grey kit bag, Chris blinks hard, scrunching his eyes up several times, but the bathroom's still too white and glaring, like when you come out of a building into summer midday sun. Sebastian comes back, looks at Chris and reaches over to the wall to kill half the lights, only leaving the dull yellow bulbs outlining the mirror glowing. He closes the door too. "That better?" Chris nods blankly, his mind filling up with the sound of the rushing water. "Yeah?" Sebastian presses.

"Yeah," Chris manages finally, his voice so creaky and gone only half the word gets out and he has to clear his throat and try again. "Yeah." It doesn't sound much better. Sebastian smiles.

"Okay." He tests the water, finds it to his liking, and starts to fill the sink, then begins unpacking the little kit. Chris just watches, the steam clouding up the mirror and getting into his lungs, relaxing him already. Seb unzips the case, sets out a toothbrush-sized box with "HARRY'S" printed on it, a smaller tube of shaving cream, and one more small box. "Really, you should shower, to soften up the bristles," Sebastian says absently, and Chris sucks in a big breath of wet warm air, "or use a hot towel, but I think this'll work okay." He turns off the water so it's suddenly very quiet, and pushes up his sleeves, wincing only a little bit as he touches his left arm, then dips both hands in the water. Without shaking them off, he turns slowly, so Chris can see what's coming, and puts his palms on either side of Chris's cheeks, rubbing the moisture into his skin.

Chris has the impulse to shut his eyes, but doesn't; he just keeps looking at Sebastian, who holds his gaze, very serious, then gets a little not-smile on his face. "Couple more," he says, and repeats dipping his hands, cupping his fingers around Chris's jawline and chin, massaging the stubble. Chris's face is flushed and he feels like his spine is starting to melt.

"Shit! -- oh, sorry." Sebastian brought over a little too much water and the front of Chris's shirt is wet, which is hilarious because it's one of those old frayed white cotton tees that get so worn there are tiny rents in the fabric, soft and silky to wear, but basically tissue paper. It immediately looks as if Chris is in a trashy softcore wet T-shirt contest, and he struggles not to laugh, because he knows he might not be able to stop if he lets it out. Sebastian tries dabbing at it with a towel, but that just makes it even more clingy.

"Let's....just get this off," Sebastian says, sounding as if he's trying not to howl with laughter too. "Lift up your arms?" Chris does, and apparently there's a big hole he didn't know about because while Sebastian is extra-careful trying to peel the goddamn shirt off him, it rips anyway.

Chris goes for it and just claws at the now-gaping hole under one arm and yanks. There's almost no resistance and the fabric splits along the seam of the sleeve, then below the collar and he can feel it giving along his back, too. "Well, wow. Okay," Sebastian says. He helps Chris free, getting the collar and one shoulder of the shirt from around his neck. Chris balls up the shirt in his hands, yanks at it a few more times, then tosses it into the bathtub.

"Hunh. Maybe they picked the wrong guy to be the Hulk," Sebastian says, smiling open-mouthed in his what-did-I-just-see way. He raises both eyebrows as high as they'll go, which is pretty goddamn high, and they laugh, not really because anything is that funny. He opens the bigger box, which turns out to contain a razor with a _bright neon orange_ contoured body that looks like something Howard Stark might have used. Chris snorts, desperate not to lose it. "I know, I know," Seb says. "But trust me, this stuff is really good."

He fits the blade cartridge into the razor, swishes it around in the hot water, and starts rubbing up the shaving cream -- it doesn't foam right out of the tube, like the cheap-ass stuff in a can Chris uses, but looks almost like heavy lotion until it starts getting frothy. "You'll love this shit," Sebastian says, gently working the lather, "it's got licorice and cucumber, coconut oil, eucalyptus and what else....oh yeah, peppermint. Mackie got me hooked on it." Chris rolls his eyes and Seb says, "Before you make assumptions, this whole bag actually costs about fifteen bucks." He steps closer, gently spreading Chris's knees by pressing one foot against the inside of his leg, hunkers down in front of him, studying his face, and then actually goes down on one knee. Chris swallows hard.

Sebastian's face is just inches away from his, his breath warm on Chris's skin, his side pressed against the inside of Chris's leg. He looks at the angles and planes of Chris's face as he smooths on the lather, delicately directing Chris to tilt his head or lift his chin just with his fingertips, only occasionally saying "Up a little bit, there....good, that's great," or "To the side? Okay, fantastic." His eyes are immense and way too close, unreadable at this distance. Chris gives in to temptation and shuts his own eyes, feeling Seb's fingers stroke down his face, tracing a line under his jaw, brushing up for the sideburns, circling around his mouth. It's like being in a perfect little warm bubble. It feels, weirdly, like the big fight scene they had at the end of their last movie, when they were basically on a steel frame with a couple of props and surrounded by green, and didn't have much to focus on in the whole set except each other. Chris kept having problems with it, but Seb just laughed and talked about black box theater ("only I guess this would be....green box, right").

Chris feels Seb lean away, warmth and weight suddenly gone, but then he's back, doing something with his hands, and he says gently, "I'm going to put this towel around your neck, okay?" Chris nods and bows his head, not opening his eyes. Seb loops the towel around him, tugging on the ends a little bit to get him into the right position, then picks up the razor and swishes it around again. But he doesn't start right away. He says, "This is like lotion, so we're just gonna let it sit on your face for a little bit," and puts his left hand on Chris's right shoulder, squeezing a little when Chris doesn't respond. Chris just nods again. He doesn't know how much time goes by, he waits with Seb's hand on him and Seb between his legs in the warm damp blackness, and feels like he could wait there forever.

"Okay, here we go," Seb says, dipping the razor one more time, and Jesus, the blade must be sharp as fuck, it just glides right across his skin without even the hint of a tug. Sebastian goes fast, using more quick little strokes than Chris usually does, moving all over like he's a painter prepping a canvas instead of clearing one big swathe and moving on to the next. The scent of the lotion rises up, sharp and spicy but subtle, nothing like the typical chemical "fresh" smell he's used to. He feels Sebastian put two fingers under his chin again to tilt his head up, and the razor slides over his jaw, then right under, delicately working back and forth, then there's a pause and the same sensation on the other side. Chris suppresses a shiver.

Sebastian holds his chin in one hand, very lightly, and turns his face side to side, touches up a little here, a little there, then Chris hears the click of the razor being set down on the counter and Sebastian starts wiping off some of the leftover lather by his ears and mouth with an end of the towel around his neck. He smooths his fingers over Chris's cheeks again, saying, "Now this stuff you don't wanna rinse off -- it's lotion, so you rub it in a little bit. And _no_ aftershave."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Chris says seriously. He feels Sebastian draw back, and very reluctantly opens his eyes, maybe the time he's least wanted to do so since Monday mornings early in middle school, when his anxiety attacks would keep him up half the night. Sebastian's just poised there, still on his knees but not touching him. "Well hey, there you are," he says, smiling one of those real big, real, rare smiles. "All right?"

Chris tries to talk, has to clear his throat several times. "Yeah -- oh, yeah. Thanks, I...." Words feel really inadequate, even more than usual. "That was....great, yeah. I feel really relaxed." The smile gets even brighter.

"Oh, yeah? Awesome. Okay then," he says, getting both feet underneath him and standing up in one long graceful move, "let's show you off to those lovely ladies." He just leaves everything where it is, not bothering to clean up yet, and bangs on the door, calling "Are you all decent?"

There's an answering flurry of giggles and Mackie fake-complains "Damn, bro, you couldn't have waited five more minutes?" and the giggles turn into shrieks of laughter, at which point Seb unwisely opens the door and instead of him and Chris being able to get out, Scarlett and Hayley pile in the bathroom with them. They hover around Seb, trying to shove past him to get to Chris, still trapped sitting down. "Let's see, let's _see!"_ Hayley cries out, and finally Seb lets them get in between him and Chris for the full frontal. They shriek like seagulls but in a pretty way, then flutter and bob around him, almost cooing. "Oh, that's great, that's really great, Chris," Hayley says, and Scarlett nods vigorously, even the short short hair on top of her nearly-buzzed head shaking, she agrees that hard. _"So_ much better than Sleeping Beauty's castle!"

"You look really good," Scarlett says, and casts a sly look up at Seb, who gives her one just as sly back, like she's approving of more than just the haircut. Chris feels his face heat up, but thankfully that can be excused by the steam. "Looks good," Mackie agrees from somewhere behind the girls in the clipped, quiet way he has when he's actually being serious, which for so long was hard for Chris to tease out from the drawled trolling and deadpan teasing, just like Seb's.

"A selfie, a selfie!" Hayley yells, because all shall love her and despair via social media. Chris feels his anxiety spike. "NO," he tries to yell above the congratulatory noise, because he hates selfies, he's never going to be on Instagram, and he _just got_ this look five seconds ago and wants to be a little more comfortable in his skin before sharing it with the thousands and thousands of people who favourite every single Twitter post he makes. Especially since there is no such thing as a selfie from a flattering angle. And a Chris Evans selfie will be retweeted to Mars and halfway back in five minutes.

"I'll do it," Seb says, calm and authoritative, holding out his hand for her phone. Hayley rolls her eyes but hands it over, and they all shuffle around. "How about -- yeah, you two get on either side of him, very good." He stoops down a little to get on their level, framing the picture.

"But what he really wants to do is _direct,"_ Scarlett says, with that side-of-the-mouth humour of hers, and they all crack up, which is of course when Seb snaps the damn picture. Before Chris can even open his mouth to protest, Seb straightens up and turns the phone around to show Scarlett and Hayley, who immediately plucks it away, sliding her fingers across the screen. Chris guesses it's already tagged with names and the date, uploaded and probably being viewed _now_ by fans who have alerts set up. That fast. He'll never get used to it. But while the screen is still in sight he can see both of them giving him rabbit ears, Scarlett with the goofy open-mouthed smile she does when takes go wrong and Hayley looking like classic Hollywood, and....Chris thinks for just a minute that he doesn't actually look that bad, like in the picture Hayley took of the three of them on the bed. Then some mental switch flips, something he can almost _feel_ in his head, the anxiety taking the wheel, and all he can see are all the flaws and imperfections everyone else could zero in on, the same old overwhelming feeling that eclipses everything else, that thousands and thousands of people are _staring at him_ and he can feel his chest getting tight....

Seb puts one hand on Chris's shoulder, lightly holding him without really pinning him down, but keeping him still. The Terrible Two clatter back into the bedroom and sound like they're starting to try to coax Mackie into something, God knows what, but Seb doesn't look after them. He just moves closer to Chris, deliberately looming above him in a way he was careful to avoid when shaving him, and puts one hand on Chris's cheek very lightly. Chris can feel Seb's palm on his newly bare skin, his thumb brushing just under his chin, tilting his face upward again, higher.

"You know," Seb drawls, "that's going to be seen by hundreds of people....thousands....in the next fifteen minutes. Maybe even millions, after a couple of months."

"Yeah," Chris agrees, a little bummed at the thought, the anxiety squirming under his ribs again. He looks down, but Seb keeps his hand where it is, pushes gently up so Chris involuntarily looks back at him. Seb's hand slides slowly down, fingers resting against his throat, palm under Chris's chin now, his thumb brushing just against Chris's bottom lip. Chris doesn't breathe. He just feels Seb's hands on him again, not really holding him any harder than before, the pressure light but restrained, but _there._

"But when _you_ see it," Seb goes on, his voice going all throaty like a cross between a growl and a purr, "every time you see it, you'll remember what was happening right before that. Nobody else will know. But you and I will." He just stares into Chris's eyes, not blinking, entirely focused on him.

Chris's knees go weak even though he's sitting down and he's sure Seb can feel the hot blood rushing to his cheeks against his hands. "Yeah," he manages to get out, and he's never heard his own voice sound so breathy and low at the same time before.

Seb cups Chris's face in both hands again, gently, like it's something precious, his own longer hair brushing his collar and shoulders as he's looking down. Chris wants to reach up and touch it, to run his fingers along Seb's jawline, lips, skin, but he's frozen in place, just by the little light touch of Seb's hands. Seb smiles at him, another one of those real, slow, uncurling smiles -- two in about five minutes, that's got to be some kind of record.

From the bedroom, Mackie cries "Hey, hey, two supergirls against one guy, now that's just wrong" and there's more stifled noise you might expect from fourteen-year-olds at summer sleepaway camp and then the heavy hotel door actually bangs shut and then a few seconds later slams again even more loudly, and _then_ it's abruptly quiet. Almost as if someone was trying to get out of the room and put the door between himself and two pursuing Amazons who only yanked the door back open right behind him and are now chasing him merrily down the hall, although thank God from the way the noise died abruptly the doors are apparently soundproofed. Chris hopes so, anyway. Then again, if Hayley does actually wake up regular people who aren't actors and therefore have routine sleep schedules, they'll probably just be ecstatic to see her and get sucked into a dubsmash routine within minutes. Even when she's not using her powers for good, there's an infectious joy about her that everyone catches like an emotional virus, an honest delight in the essential silliness of life. The hotel room sounds even more hushed, the silence settling down like snow now that she's whirled off. Seb's hands had dropped back down to his sides when the door slammed.

"Talk about born under a dancing star," Seb says, and Chris's attention abruptly snaps back to him. He knows it's a quote but can't remember from what right at the moment. Hell, he doubts he could say the few lines he was muttering and mentally rehearsing and then delivering on cue for hours today.

Sebastian draws back and seems a little remote again, not in a bad way; he's observing, not participating, detaching himself, one step removed from the action around him. It's like he's maybe waiting for something. Chris tries to figure out what it might be but instead Seb offers a hand and Chris finally gets up, levering himself to stand upright in the small space, not feeling that anxious but also not really sure of what's going to happen next, either. Usually that would wind him up tighter than a cheap watch but he still feels relaxed from the shave.

"You're really good at that," he says earnestly as he follows Seb back out into the bedroom, which feels a bit too chilly now. "You know, if they don't wind up giving you the shield after all, you could open a barbershop maybe...." Seb let slip once that he feels the possibility of being Cap is dangled in front of him by the brass too much, yanked back and forth like a yo-yo, so of course they all started ragging him about it.

"Shut up," Seb says absently, looking for something -- he pats himself down, takes his hands in and out of all his pockets, glances around the flat surfaces by the bed, furrowing his forehead a little.

"Gonna make me?" Chris jokes, to get Seb's attention back from whatever he's misplaced. It works.

Seb grins and says with that wonderful drawl, "Well, if you _want_ me to," and they both laugh again, Chris more at how he managed to break Sebastian up. Then he realizes his own pockets feel too light -- his keycard's still in there, flat against his thigh, but his phone must have slipped out, probably while he was bending over looking for the Scotch bottle beside the bed. He goes over to look, but the phone and bottle both aren't there. He sits on the bed, which feels so soft and comfortable he lies down instead of looking around elsewhere too. He really didn't have that much to drink, but he's phenomenally relaxed.

He closes his eyes, feels almost like he could go to sleep -- then Seb flops down next to him. He opens his eyes again but looks up at the ceiling, darting quick glances over at Seb every now and then. Seb crosses his arms behind his head, staring up too, like they're stargazing through the drywall and plaster and all the other rooms on top of this one. It's very quiet except for their breathing. Seb's is deep, regular, and it doesn't change at all before he starts talking, as if he was rehearsing what he wanted to say in his head.

"You know, what we were talking about....they can think, whatever," he says, and Chris doesn't follow him for a couple of seconds. "What people you don't know think about you....You can't change what they think, and you don't really know, unless they tell you. But they don't know what _you_ think. That's private. They have the choice, at the end of the day, to know what's true, and separate out the rest, filter out what's just -- noise. But they can't see inside you."

Chris wishes he felt that way, solid all the way through. Instead he always feels transparent as glass, as his mom says, like a plastic anatomical exhibit he saw once on a school trip, everything lit up and on display. Like how he talks about his anxiety about interviews _during the interviews,_ which he does sometimes because he does want to reach out to other people who have it; but the anxiety feeds on itself, getting even worse, and usually he winds up drinking (and getting the interviewer drunk) to hide it, which doesn't really help. He knows now he was wrong to be afraid of the Marvel job taking away his privacy, his own choices. He's been doing that all by himself.

He thinks Seb is saying if you really have that private, secret self, the stillness inside you, it can't be taken away, not by anybody. But it's what he's been looking for his whole life, and he's never found it yet, not for longer than a few minutes here and there. Sometimes he almost wishes that the tattoo on his chest could somehow get under not just his skin, but go deeper, penetrate his heart, if that's the only way to know it for real, not just with his head.

He sighs. "I know, yeah," he says, "not to be rude, but -- I do know. But knowing _that_ I know doesn't....help, in a weird way? I just get down on myself more, for knowing and still feeling all that....shit. It's just fucking stupid."

"No," Seb says, his voice sounding soft but implacable. "That's just human, that's all. Normal."

"Yeah," Chris says, getting a little more into the conversation, now that he can direct it away from himself. "I know, the problem is, the brain I'm using to try to -- get through all this shit -- is the brain that's also _formed by_ all this shit, right? Is stuck right in the middle of it. We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." He huffs softly at himself, and hears Seb do it too. "And I think shit like that, and then I think, _'Fuck,_ I need a drink.'" He looks at the bottles on the nightstands again, trying to find one that has even a little left in the bottom, but they're all dead soldiers. "Jesus, those girls can put it away like the lifers at Sligo Pub."

Sebastian's quiet for a couple of minutes, there's just the sound of his breathing, slow and relaxed, and then he asks softly: "Is that part of why you got so down today?"

Chris looks over at him, but Seb's still staring straight up at the ceiling. He sighs again. "Yeah, part of it, it's just....I mean, I know we're not gonna be here that long, but I miss....home. I miss my crew, I miss my family....real life. That's what this shit is supposed to be all for, right? Work to live, not live to work. I just, I feel....kinda panicked, when I can't get back there. When I _feel_ like I can't, that there isn't a choice, that I'm stuck here, whether I want to go or not...." He shuts up fast before he starts drunk crying on Seb in Hayley's hotel room, because that sounds like a tabloid news story for the ages just dying to happen. "Don't you feel that way about New York?" he asks. "Do you get homesick?"

Seb thinks about it for a few minutes, in that considering way he has. "Yeah, sometimes," he says. "But we moved around so much when I was a kid....I didn't know what to expect for a long time....what was safe to get attached to. I don't mind it so much now. I like some of _this"_ \-- Chris knows he means the Marvel machine -- "a lot, being on the road, having opportunities -- going to conventions in Brazil, or China, that's amazing. But back then, it was really hard, switching schools every year, having an accent, not knowing the shows and stuff everyone else was talking about -- or even really basic stuff, like history. That's why I like reading, preparing, so much," he says, to Chris's surprise, since he's never heard Sebastian admit anything like this before. "I like really getting all the details, knowing as much as I can about a role, all the different backgrounds and dimensions it can have. Anyway, I guess I just decided....if I was an immigrant, a _man without a country,"_ he says sardonically, and Chris knows he's missing another reference, "if I felt like I didn't have a home, home was going to have to be....inside me. I am my own home. I can trust that. And trust....that the path is going somewhere. When I was younger I didn't have the slightest idea I'd be doing this now. No idea! I got to ask questions of astronauts in _space._ And look at the movie I'm in right now, the actors I'm in it with, the other stuff I've done. Maybe in the future I'll feel some other way, want to do something else. But I know what I'm doing now."

Chris is so impressed he can't think of anything good to say in reply to that, so of course he comes out with something stupid. "I kept forgetting, when we first met, that you were born in Romania," he says. "Every time I remembered it, when somebody said something on the press tour, I was surprised, because you were so....all-American in the film."

To his surprise, again, Seb just turns his head and looks directly into his eyes, laughing a little. "Bucky Barnes is all-American, yeah," he agrees. "But the Winter Soldier has that weird Russian background, where he gets moved around, that East European and Russian and then American journey, so it was like -- typecasting."

Chris wriggles around a little, his hands coming up to help express what his words can't. "You make it a joke, but, you know, it's _true!"_ he says. "I mean, that he really does have the American background but also the European stuff on top of all that, or mixed in. _Both_ things. I got so pissed on set today -- it wasn't even anything anybody said, it's not a big thing, just one line, it was dumb of me to get all hung up on it. I know why it had to be written that way and said that way, I know why they did it like that instead of how I wanted it to go, but I just saw it all different in my head, like I always do, that's the fucking problem."

Seb's staring straight up ahead again. "What did you not like, ah, disagree, with?" he asks, almost idly, like he's not that invested in the answer.

Chris plunges on, since he's been stewing about this since about nine fucking o'clock in the goddamned morning. "Oh, just the, the idea, that Steve would abandon him. Even if he'd done terrible things. Even if Bucky was still _doing_ terrible things, the guy actually tried to _kill_ him last time, right? But they've known each other so long -- it's like one of those old epic movies, that showed generations of a family or something -- the setup just seemed wrong, that he'd have to _prove_ anything. No matter what he went through. Steve would know. They would both just know. They _did,_ they did know, even after it was, how fucking long, seventy, eighty years -- "

"I forgot you're such a romantic," Sebastian says, laughing but not in a mean way, "you're in love with love stories -- "

"It is! It's a love story!" Chris bangs his fist on the bed a couple of times for emphasis. "That's the point, it's really just simple. That's the fucking point. They love each other."

Sebastian's quiet, and the pause goes on for long enough that Chris wonders if he's offended him somehow, or otherwise really fucked things up. Sebastian turns his head again, all the way to the right, so he's looking straight into Chris's eyes again with about two inches of space between them, and just says softly, "Yeah. They do."

And -- there's no kinder way to put it -- to his later shame, and anger (only at himself), and, most of all, deep regret -- Chris flips out.

He doesn't really remember the details of how he left, or doesn't want to. He just froze for what must have been a few seconds but dragged on like forever squared while he and Sebastian stared at each other, right after agreeing that their two main characters in this multi-million dollar movie love each other. That they have a connection that outlasts death, despair, torture, time itself. A bond so intense, so much more important than anything else it's a little scary. It _is_ the kind of love story Chris loves, like _Legends of the Fall_ and _The Fountain_ and _The English Patient._ It's not something he's ever had in his own life; it's not something he's ever really expected. He knows of course he and Seb aren't Bucky and Steve, but the way they were talking about it, was just --

He knows Seb looked away again after awhile, and he sat up with his back to Seb, trying not to breathe too hard, because all this fucking needed was him totally melting down. His feelings typically overwhelm him at the worst moments; it's like having a bad knee that just gives out on you right when you know you need to run.

He said something like "Well, I'm kinda tired, I should go," or some equally stupid absolutely transparent bullshit lie, and Seb didn't say anything, and Chris just got up and walked to the door, not looking back, heard the self-locking mechanism click behind him and then somehow just kept going, still trying to breathe evenly, in and out, until he was in front of his own door and then behind it and everything was just as he'd left it. As if nothing had happened at all.

Chris sits on his neatly made bed in the dark, only a few little electronic lights glowing here and there -- the cell phone charger, the standby button on the flatscreen TV console, the clock on the coffeemaker -- and knows he's let himself down as he always has, just when it matters most. He blew it.

 

3.

 

Chris never knew, after that, how long he wound up sitting there in the dark, mind blank, not feeling, not thinking. Just sitting. It's a new kind of detachment he's never felt before, and seems dimly unpleasant. (He wishes, in a weird distant way, he could call _Robert,_ for some reason. But even that's not a really strong feeling.) He knows, rationally, he's in a state of emotional shock, and he has to deal with it, do something -- take a shower, get drunk, eat his dinner left over from what feels like a year before -- or he'll feel even worse. And tomorrow's going to be a long day. But the thought of getting up drifts past him, as if it were a balloon, and he incuriously watches it bob on by. It's the opposite of being in the moment, living in the now. What a fly might feel like fossilized in amber, maybe. He's out of time; there's no measuring it, wherever this is.

("It was maybe thirty minutes," Sebastian tells him, much later. "Forty-five at most. I was lying there freaking out, and then I -- ")

("It really didn't feel like any fucking forty-five minutes," Chris mutters.)

("No, it didn't.")

What finally rouses Chris is something outside himself -- right outside his hotel door. There's a soft knock, so light he wonders if he even heard it, or if it was really a sound from beyond the window instead. No: whoever it is knocks again, louder, five sharp taps. Why doesn't he know who it is, why is someone knocking rather than calling -- oh, right. Because he lost his goddamn cell phone. Somewhere in Hayley's room.

He gets up and shuffles to the door, checking the peephole from habit, and draws back like it's red-hot -- no, he can't be that lucky. But he looks again, and it's Sebastian, image slightly warped because he's leaning on the doorframe with one hand. In his other hand he's holding something up, a cell phone: Chris's cell phone, he recognizes the lock screen picture, an old one of him and his family so he can look at them all while he's stuck here. Chris fumbles with the lock and once he's yanked the door open, stands there staring at Seb as if he hasn't seen him in a year.

Sebastian clears his throat and straightens up. "I, uh, was getting up, off the bed in the other room, and dropped my cell phone, and I saw this other cell phone right next to it, and saw it was yours....the picture." He's still holding it; Chris is too dazed to notice. "And the others....came back, and they, uh...." He tries to laugh, shaking his head. "And I....just wanted to leave and go to bed, and realized when I got to my room, that I never found my keycard. What a night." He sort-of laughs again, it's awful.

Time starts up again for Chris -- Sebastian is _here,_ talking to _him._ He backs out of the doorway, pulling the door more open, out of the way. "Oh -- come in, will you?" He looks down, then back up. "Please?"

Sebastian's face softens, but his eyes remain wary. "Oh, yeah. Sure." He walks in past Chris, and the proximity makes Chris's skin prickle. Chris closes the door carefully, like it's something he doesn't want to break.

Chris then realizes when the door starts to swing shut and cuts off the light from the hallway that he's just revealed he was sitting here in the dark by himself like the saddest of sad bastards, and also that Sebastian probably doesn't want to stumble and trip over something, although all the hotel room layouts are either identical or mirror images. He circles widely around where he guesses Sebastian is to the nightstand and flicks on a lamp, which is better than the overhead anyway: warm, low, soothing. He's closer to Sebastian than he thought -- Sebastian must have kept advancing with that long stride -- and they both edge back from each other.

Sebastian looks around, as if this place is totally unfamiliar and not a duplicate of his own room. There's a padded bench with pillows running along the wall under the windows, but the bed's in between him and that, and the spindly armchair between the bed and the other wall is full of dirty laundry. He steps over and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, bent over a little bit, his forearms resting on his knees so his hands dangle in front of him. It's not like he doesn't want to stay, more that he expects he'll get kicked out. It makes Chris's throat hurt.

Chris takes a deep breath, and focuses on Sebastian's hands: big silver watch, long twitching fingers, a couple of thin black leather bracelets. He makes himself look up at Sebastian's face, those guarded eyes looking much darker, greyer, in the muted light. "I'm sorry I left you like that," he hears himself say. "I was an asshole."

Sebastian's face changes completely -- he looks much younger, more vulnerable, and so hopeful it hurts. "No, no," he says, sitting up, nervously smoothing his hair back behind an ear. "I was an asshole. I....I pushed you."

Chris frowns. "What do you mean?" He's suddenly aware he's not wearing a shirt, but he doesn't want to turn away for even however long it would take to pull one from the closet, this feels that important.

Sebastian looks down at the ground, sighs, like he's embarrassed or ashamed. "In the....bathroom, you know, in Hayley's room, I was..." He shrugs, a movement of misery. "I shouldn't have...."

"What?" Chris demands. "Made a -- pass?" That's not the right word for what happened, but he goes on anyway. "I was there too, you know, I _liked_ it." Sebastian's head snaps up and he almost glares at Chris with those clouded eyes. Chris lifts his chin and keeps going.

"I liked all of it. I liked you taking my shirt off, I liked you shaving me, all the -- attention, I liked you talking to me, taking care of me, like -- " He can't find the right words and clenches his fists in frustration, almost angry. He's about two feet in front of Sebastian, towering over him.

He's also got a raging hardon. He doesn't know quite how that happened, but he sees Sebastian's eyes drop to his crotch, the sweatpants obscenely distended. "I want to do....whatever you want."

Seb's eyes are still dark. "You don't know what I want," he says, like what he wants is somehow weird, or wrong even, and it pisses Chris off again. He swallows hard.

"Whatever it is, I want it." He moves closer to Sebastian, nearly shoving his crotch in his face, as proof. "I know....I want to do anything....anything you want." He's breathing fast, his nipples are so tight they almost hurt a little, there's this weird electricity coursing through him, something he feels is almost visible, currents moving around in the darkened room.

The offer hangs in the air between them like the smell of perfume, or smoke, colouring everything.

Seb just looks back at him, their eyes locked, like it's some strange kind of staring contest, that stupid acting exercise you have to do where you look into someone's eyes for as long as you can without cracking up. Sebastian's breathing is fast too, now, his chest pushing up and down under the thick grey pullover he's wearing.

His mouth opens and he reaches one hand up and traces his fingers down Chris's hip, catching the waistband of the sweatpants and pulling them down, slowly, and they're so baggy he doesn't have to pull much before they slide off completely. Chris shuts his eyes and his head goes back, feeling the fabric catch a little over his dick and then the cool air on his skin. Sebastian's hands are on both his hips now and he guides Chris down, gently, moving back on the bed so Chris winds up on his knees between Sebastian's legs, hands relaxed by his sides, his breathing slowing, getting more quiet. Sebastian's hands slide up his stomach, his chest, his shoulders as Chris sinks down, before he runs his fingers up either side of Chris's neck and cradles his face gently, the way he did in the bathroom.

"You're so beautiful," he murmurs, and Chris blushes a little -- he's still not used to people saying that about him, and Sebastian saying it to him makes his cock feel like it's carved out of marble. "Look at me," Sebastian says, and Chris opens his eyes. "You're beautiful," Sebastian says again, and leans forward to kiss him.

It's the first time Chris has kissed a guy, ever, and some of it's not that different: Sebastian has soft lips, faintly chapped at the edges, and his silky tongue outlines Chris's mouth and then slips inside. One hand moves to the back of Chris's head and tightens in his hair, not much at first but then enough to hold Chris still, his other hand roving all the hell over Chris, down his face, over his neck, fingernails trailing further down Chris's chest to one nipple, which he pinches lightly (Chris gasps), back up to his shoulder around to his spine. The bristle is definitely different, though, and the harsh smell of sweat and something else, faint but musky, the hard angle of Seb's jaw when he pulls back. Chris opens his eyes again, ready to protest.

He doesn't have the heart when he sees Sebastian looking at him like a broke guy who's been given an extra twenty back in change that he needs desperately but knows he can't keep. Sebastian puts one hand on Chris's face again, fingers moving over his mouth, his jaw, curving behind one ear. "If you want to stop," he says, his voice raw and hoarse, sounding about an octave deeper and sending a chill down Chris's spine that makes his cock jump, "we can....we could just lie here and....go to sleep or something...."

It would be funny in an awful way if it wasn't so goddamn tragic. Chris, to his own complete and total surprise, leans forward and kisses Seb hard and deep, narrowly missing clashing their teeth together, and reaches up to clutch at Seb's shoulders, no cool whatsoever. Seb's arms go around him, fingers digging into his back, both of them hanging on for dear life. Chris shoves his tongue into Seb's mouth, does it again, feels Seb rock back, and then Seb breaks the kiss off and bends down to suck on the side of Chris's neck, _hard._ Chris groans and feels himself relax so much that if Sebastian weren't holding him up, he might fall to the floor. Sebastian sucks again, even harder, then bites the muscle where his shoulder joins his neck and that's it, Chris is done for. He groans louder and jerks in Sebastian's arms, fingers loosening their grip, his head falling to one side.

Sebastian draws his tongue gently up the side of his neck and then goes to work on Chris's left ear, tonguing and sucking the sensitive spots behind and under it, biting the rim gently and then just hanging on, increasing the pressure little by little until when he lets go, Chris's ear is stinging and he gasps aloud at the relief. Sebastian grasps the back of his neck again, not hard but firm, and runs the fingers of his other hand over Chris's face, his cheekbones, forehead, nose, jawline, lips. "You're so beautiful," he breathes, barely more than a whisper, "so good, you taste so good....What....what's okay for you?"

"What do you want?" Chris whispers back. Sebastian shakes his head a little, laughing, like Chris is too good to be true, runs his fingers over Chris's lips again -- Chris sucks two into his mouth, hard, locks eyes with Sebastian and uses his tongue, trying to make it dirty as he can. He opens his mouth and moves his head back and forth, skywriting his intentions. Sebastian slips in another finger and Chris takes that in too, licking and using his teeth a little. Sebastian breathes all the way out, harsh and loud. He pulls back, Chris still mouthing his fingers, then spreads his legs more and starts pressing down with his other hand on the back of Chris's neck, really fucking slowly, so by the time Chris's face is in his lap Sebastian's hands are both just resting on the back of his head. Chris can't be sure, because his cheek is against Sebastian's thigh, but he thinks Sebastian might be holding his breath.

Chris eyes the bulge in Sebastian's jeans, maybe more turned on than he ever has been in his life and also a little freaked, he can't lie. He puts his mouth on the strained denim, opens his lips and breathes out hard, trying what he knows he likes himself, and Sebastian's hand clenches in his hair and he says _"Oh_ God oh GodohGod" in a beautiful choked-off way. Chris does it again and feels Sebastian's hips jerk under him, then tries mouthing him through the stiff denim. He hates the taste of cloth, but it's worth it when Sebastian groans, helpless. Feeling almost drunk, but determined, Chris pulls down the zipper, leaving the button done, reaches in and slides Sebastian's cock out of his briefs and jeans, slick with pre-come already and so hard he must be aching. Chris kisses up and down Sebastian's length open-mouthed, licks sloppily at it, uses just the edges of his teeth lightly again -- "You're too fucking good at that," Sebastian breathes above him -- playing his inexperience up a little bit, trying to make up for lack of technique. Sebastian reaches down tentatively and feels Chris's mouth around his cock, and Chris draws one of his fingers in, sucking and licking at it too, and Sebastian starts groaning on every exhale, a steady low _oh -- oh -- oh._

Chris gets overconfident and tries to deep-throat, and while he gets his nose pressed right against Sebastian's soft grey shirt, Sebastian's cock hits the back of his throat and he gags. Sebastian instantly tries to pull him up, saying "You don't have to do that, it's okay, Chris -- " Chris looks up, straight into Sebastian's eyes, says "I want to" -- it sounds too much like begging. He clears his throat, says again louder, "I want to."

Sebastian just looks at him for a moment, then says "Okay," and moves further toward the edge of the bed so he's barely sitting on it, giving Chris more room. Chris breathes in deep and tries again, trying to relax his jaw and throat this time so he won't choke, taking Seb all the way in and managing to stay with it about five seconds this time. Seb says "OH" in this great wondering surprised tone, and Chris wants to hear that again, so he shoves Seb's cock back down his own throat, pulling away more slowly. It's even better the second time: Seb runs his hands through Chris's hair, completely dazed, murmuring "You look so good, you look so fucking good with your mouth full like that, taking it all, it's _so_ fucking good...." Chris isn't even sure Sebastian knows what he's saying. It goes to his head like a hit of coke.

Chris goes back to sucking him off, more than a little at sea, trying to figure out when to speed up or slow down, suck harder or ease up, based on how Sebastian reacts; it turns out Seb likes it slower and lighter than Chris does, and he's so responsive it's easy to tell what gets him off. In no time at all Seb's muscles are tensing all over, a faint tremor Chris can only feel because he's right on top of him, breath catching in big gasps, sounding utterly lost. Chris feels triumphant and speeds up, his hands moving from Sebastian's thighs to his hips and back, using his nails, digging in even through the jeans. Seb groans again, and like he's trying to remember how to talk says "Chris, Chris, I'm close, I'm gonna -- no, wait -- " He tries to push Chris's head away gently but Chris bears down even harder, and feels first a little wetness in his mouth, then more, then a _lot_ more, but he swallows it all, still licking and sucking. Sebastian's come tastes strong, a little spicy, almost bitter but not in a bad way. He keeps sucking until Sebastian writhes under him and pushes at one shoulder, then stops, still holding Sebastian's cock in his mouth, not wanting to pull off and return to the real world at all. He remembers what one girl did for him and gently licks Sebastian clean, lightly circling around the tip -- Sebastian shudders -- and finally lets go, rests his head on Sebastian's thigh again and lets out a big shuddering breath. The insides of his lips are sore and he knows he was probably too rough and fast, there certainly wasn't any kind of finesse, but he still feels a little high on his own daring.

Sebastian looks down, leaning over him, stroking his hair. "You're amazing," he says, his voice rough and crackly. Chris smiles, sitting naked at Sebastian's feet with his face in his lap and feeling like he's found Nirvana. "You don't have to....do that, you know, swallow."

"I know." Chris twists his head up and looks Sebastian in the eye again. "I wanted to. I told you."

Sebastian shakes his head again, like he can't believe it. "Come here," he says, "up here," and moves over so Chris can get up and on the bed next to him. Sebastian unsnaps the button on his jeans, pulls them down along with his briefs and kicks them off the rest of the way, takes off his shirt and drops it over the side of the bed. He makes more room for Chris, then rolls over on his right side, wrapping his left arm around Chris a little carefully, his other hand snaking under Chris's waist so he can pull Chris most of the way over on top of him, skin to skin. Chris buries his face in Sebastian's neck, smells sweat, musk, soap and shampoo and other chemical smells. They both lie there quietly, relaxing, breath evening out. Chris is still rock-hard.

Chris lifts his head and asks, "Why'd you look so....freaked out, when you came in? Why were you apologizing?"

Sebastian's fingers, which have been tracing lazily between Chris's shoulderblades, back and forth, stop for a moment, then begin moving again, much more slowly. "I....thought I pushed you," he says again. "I knew you hadn't....been with guys, I was being kinda toppy" -- _toppy,_ Chris mouths, and Sebastian rolls his eyes -- "yeah, _toppy_ \-- and I....was afraid you were just going along with it because we were friends, because we have to work together on these big movies, that you felt you couldn't say no." He hunches his shoulders again in that guilty shrug.

Chris is quiet for a moment. "It didn't feel like that at all," he says softly, putting his hand on Sebastian's cheek so he'll look at him. "Honest. It was.... _new,_ I'll give you that, sure, but not _bad,_ no way. No." Sebastian's eyes are still shadowed, so he grins and says, "Actually, it was hot."

"Yeah?" Sebastian says, drawing him even closer, looking relieved and also a little bit teasing. "It was what?"

"Hot." Chris shoves his hip against Sebastian, pressing his cock against his stomach. Sebastian smiles. Third really big smile today. With the real smiles, Sebastian's eyes squinch up in a way they never do when he's posing for photographs.

"How hot?" Sebastian nips gently at his ear.

"Very," Chris says, his voice going low all on its own.

"Yeah?" Sebastian runs his tongue along the skin behind Chris's ear, kisses it open-mouthed, presses down with his teeth. Chris shivers, moves his hands up and down Sebastian's arms, amazed he can touch him, that they're here, together.

"Yeah."

"Yeah?" Sebastian pushes him a little bit and rolls over at the same time, so Chris is mostly underneath him now instead of draped on top. Sebastian shifts his weight, reaches down and takes hold of Chris's cock, and then starts squeezing it very gently. Chris feels like he's going to pass out.

"Yeah," he breathes, voice shaking, no longer having any idea what they're talking about.

Sebastian bends down to kiss him, squeezing harder, his tongue gentle, probing, insistent. "Do you trust me?" he says about a quarter of an inch away from Chris's ear, his hand still moving.

"Well, I did just have your dick in my mouth," Chris points out, which gets him a real laugh, even better than the real smile. "Yeah. Yes. I do."

"Put your hands above your head," Sebastian says, his voice lower than Chris has ever heard it go before, almost a growl. "Cross them at the wrists."

Moving carefully, feeling like he's in a dream, Chris pulls his arms from around Sebastian's waist, stretches them above his head, does what Sebastian says. They're both starting to breathe fast again, staring into each other's eyes, and he can feel his pulse racing. Sebastian reaches up and clasps his left hand around Chris's wrists, squeezing hard at the same time he strokes down on Chris's cock. Chris gasps and his hips thrust up, but he doesn't look away. Sebastian's eyes look even darker now, his pupils dilating fast. Chris's mouth is open and his throat is dry, any minute now he's going to just start panting.

Sebastian shifts his weight again and then suddenly jerks to his right and falls nearly all the way off Chris, slamming into his side -- Chris throws his arms out and catches him, pure instinct. Chris isn't hurt, but Sebastian's face is tense and pale, and Chris guesses he put too much weight on one of those nasty bruises on his left arm. He looks down, and he's right; there's one mottled dark red oval, about two inches long, right where you'd support yourself if you were leaning on your forearm over something. "We should get some more ice for that -- "

Sebastian shakes his head, dark hair moving around his face, hiding it for a moment. "Later."

"But -- "

"No. Not now. I want to do something for you too." Sebastian gets that determined look that Chris, and other people on set, learned on that very first movie not to argue with. You could _try,_ but only if you didn't mind wasting your time. He raises up a little, slinging one leg over Chris so his bare thigh is pressing right on Chris's cock, and takes Chris's hands in his. "Lock your fingers together," he says, looking in Chris's eyes, bringing his hands together, and Chris does. "Put them behind your head." He lifts Chris's hands up, and Chris slips them underneath his own neck, feeling his heart speed up again. "Just keep them there, like that....like someone's holding you down. Like I would, except I can't right now. Can you do that? -- Is that all right for you?"

"Yeah," Chris gets out, his voice gone as creaky as it did in the bathroom. Sebastian smiles at him, like he did then, and leans down and kisses him, more deeply than he has so far. Chris arches up, trying to compensate for not being able to wrap his arms around Seb, and damned if the _feeling_ that he can't doesn't go straight to his dick. He's tried bondage a little before, but it's never really done much for him other than the "well, this is different" momentary thrill. Not being restrained, _but_ still trying to do what Sebastian wants, having it all on himself -- that's not just "different," that taps into something he never even knew he wanted -- _needed_ \-- just like the shaving did.

Sebastian can't miss it, since he's right on top of him and it's probably spelled out in neon lights on Chris's face what this is doing to him. "Oh, you like _that,_ hunh?" he drawls. "Virtue of necessity, okay." He rolls carefully back on his left side, reaches down and starts running his fingers up and down Chris's cock, way too lightly, feathery brushes with his fingertips. Chris shuts his eyes, breathes out hard, tries not to push up since he would bet Robert's first dollar points if he does that, Sebastian will just quit touching him. Sebastian chuckles, a low sweet sound. "You catch on fast." He palms Chris's dick, not squeezing, waiting. Chris bites his lip hard but still doesn't move his hips, or his hands. "Oh, yeah," Sebastian breathes, "that's good....you're so good." He starts working Chris's dick, pulling him off with long, firm strokes. Chris's eyes snap open and he starts panting for real, gripping his own fingers, pressing his elbows to the mattress, imagining he's pinned tight. Sebastian's hair falls down away from his face, brushing against Chris's neck and shoulder. He thumbs open Chris's slit, smearing precome around the head, spreading it down and jacking back up again, the warm wetness driving Chris past that point where the sensation isn't just feeling good, but building up to release, everything else narrowing down to that one moment....

"I want you so much," Sebastian hisses, right in his ear. "I want to suck you off, do sixty-nine, get inside you, finger-fuck you, ride your dick, I want everything -- I want to hear you, see how good I can make you feel, how far we can go, I want you to want me to, need me to -- " He's pumping Chris's dick hard as he talks, a low filthy stream of not so much desire as naked need, panting himself, his breath hot and ragged on Chris's neck. Chris wants to last but there's no chance with that kind of colour commentary, and he comes all over Seb's hand, his stomach, Seb's stomach, and thinks he gets the ugly hotel bedspread for good measure. He hears himself groan, low and long -- he's loud in bed, he knows that, but this is something else again.

He just lies there, limp in every possible sense, wiped out. If someone asked him what his name was right now, he'd really have to think about it.

Sebastian gently unfolds his hands from behind his head, checks his fingers, rubbing them a little bit, then gets up -- Chris doesn't even have the wits to protest -- and comes right back with a soft fluffy towel, not turning the bathroom light on. He wipes at Chris's thighs, his stomach, gently smooths over Chris's still-sensitive cock. He looks beautiful in the dim light, the yellow of the lamp smoothing out the sharpness of his features, making him look young, almost boyish. Chris reaches up with one hand, without thinking, just wanting to trace that beauty, feel it with his fingers. Sebastian leans his cheek into Chris's hand, turns his head, kisses his palm.

"Hey there," he says softly, throwing the towel on the floor with their clothes.

"Hi." Chris blinks; he feels like he could fall sound asleep any minute. Sebastian chuckles and helps lift him up, pulls down the bedspread and blankets, getting the two of them settled, and clicks off the light.

"The alarm -- tomorrow...." Chris remembers.

"Shh. It's OK, I set my phone."

Chris shivers a little between the cool sheets, but Sebastian spoons up behind him, on his right side again, resting his left arm on Chris's waist. Chris reaches for his fingers, feels Sebastian thread Chris's together with his own.

"You do realize," Seb says, sounding more than half-asleep himself, "we gotta get those boxers back from Hayley." His breath is warm on the back of Chris's neck; it's a little hard to tell, but Chris thinks Seb is nuzzling his hair.

"What, you want to wear them?" He feels more than hears Sebastian's laugh, against his back. "You want _me_ to wear them?"

"Wear them, hell, I want to frame them. You realize without those damn things, this might not have happened?"

"....first thing tomorrow," Chris says. "At breakfast. I'll get down on my knees. Beg and plead."

"Best dubsmash ever."

Chris snorts and wriggles down under the covers a little more, shoving back up against Sebastian a bit, feeling more relaxed than he ever has in his life -- including after therapy, meditation, even Xanax.

He doesn't know what will happen, if he'll go back to Boston and tap out, go to New York and try some theatre projects, if Sebastian will take over the Cap role, if Marvel doesn't renew his contract. It doesn't matter. For right now, this hotel room, this bed, being held in Sebastian's arms, is enough. More than enough. Home enough, even, for now, if home is where he is, like Sebastian said.

As Chris is drifting off, Sebastian already asleep, from the sound of his breathing, but still holding Chris's hand, he hears rain, so softly at first he thinks he's imagining it. Then it picks up, not an increasing storm but a steady fall, tapping at the windows, rattling on car windshields in the parking lot stories below, rushing in the trees. Chris listens to the sound of the water falling, pattering and dripping, until it washes him away, to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Some of what Chris and Sebastian tell each other about themselves in the middle of the story is drawn from interview quotes.  
>   
> I wrote most of this story before I learned Hayley Atwell had deleted her Twitter and Instagram, which is pretty sad, because I adored both. (Then, Chris Evans's Twitter was hacked, _while he was at Disney World._ WTF!)  
>   
>   
>  The story Robert Downey Jr. tells about the stone in the river is from Cyril Connolly's _The Unquiet Grave:_  
>   
>  _A stone lies in a river; a piece of wood is jammed against it; dead leaves, drifting logs, and branches caked with mud collect; weeds settle there, and soon birds have made a nest and are feeding their young among the blossoming water plants. Then the river rises and the earth is washed away. The birds depart, the flowers wither, the branches are dislodged and drift downward; no trace is left of the floating island but a stone submerged by the water; — such is our personality._


End file.
